This is an update on a major workers’ struggle in Ukraine, which this blog has been covering. This report first appeared at https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2018/06/04/how-workers-in-ukraines-steel-industry-are-fighting-for-wages-rights-and-democracy/

HOW WORKERS IN UKRAINE’S STEEL INDUSTRY ARE FIGHTING FOR

WAGES, RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY

Striking steel workers in Krivyi Riy

A major struggle of workers at the global corporation ArcelorMittal plant in Kryvyi Rih in southern Ukraine has been underway. The company has only just secured a rotten Ukrainian court to rule against arbitration of the dispute in an effort to delay the joint unions campaign and strike action. We publish a article on the campaign by Maxim Kazakov Ukrainian socialist and activist of the Social Movement, which has been translated by Open Democracy Ukraine Solidarity Campaign calls on the labour movement to organise solidarity with this important struggle of Ukrainian trade unions. Continue reading “HOW WORKERS IN UKRAINE’S STEEL INDUSTRY ARE FIGHTING FOR WAGES, RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY”

It is the centenary of John Maclean’s Speech from the Dock on 9th May 1918. Emancipation & Liberation are commemorating the occasion by posting it this famous speech.

SPEECH FROM THE DOCK

John Maclean making his Speech from the Dock in Edinburgh on the 9th May, 1918

It has been said that they cannot fathom my motive. For the full period of my active life I have been a teacher of economics to the working classes, and my contention has always been that capitalism is rotten to its foundations, and must give place to a new society. I had a lecture, the principal heading of which was “Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not kill”, and I pointed out that as a consequence of the robbery that goes on in all civilised countries today, our respective countries have had to keep armies, and that inevitably our armies must clash together. On that and on other grounds, I consider capitalism the most infamous, bloody and evil system that mankind has ever witnessed. My language is regarded as extravagant language, but the events of the past four years have proved my contention. Continue reading “JOHN MACLEAN – SPEECH FROM THE DOCK, 9th May 1918”

This is the second article on this blog addressing the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution (see http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2017/10/21/national-liberation-and-bolshevism-reconsidered-a-view-from-the-borderlands/). It suggests that a wider focus should be taken, situating this event in the 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave. This means and looking carefully at other places, showing how Latvia, Finland and Ukraine contributed to this wave. It looks how decisions taken by the Bolsheviks following the timeline of revolution in Russia sometimes had the effect of thwarting the timelines of revolution elsewhere. This had negative consequences for the international revolution.

This contribution is taken from is taken from Volume 4, Internationalism form Below: Communists, Nation-States and Nationalism during the 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave, by Allan Armstrong.

THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO SET UP A POST-NATIONAL WORLD ORDER

A. DIFFERING TIMELINES OF REVOLUTION

i) April 1916 to March 1921 or ‘October’ 1917 to August 1991?

History records that the key political date of the last century was October 25th, 1917. The consequences of the events, which happened on this day, determined a great deal of world politics for more than seventy years – up until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Elsewhere, in the Western imperial-dominated world October 25th was marked as November 8th. The last Russian Provisional Government of 1917 was overthrown on this date. Nevertheless, the date became universally characterised as the day the ‘October’ Revolution began. This name stuck despite the fact that the victors, the Bolsheviks, soon changed the Russian calendar from the Old Style (O.S.) used in Tsarist Russia to the New Style (N.S.) used in the rest of the Western world. History also places the location of the key events of this day in Petrograd. This city’s name too has been subject to change, earlier from St. Petersburg to Petrograd, then later to Leningrad, and today back to St. Petersburg. Continue reading “THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO SET UP A POST-NATIONAL WORLD ORDER”

3. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, OFFICIAL AND DISSIDENT COMMUNISM

AND A POLITICS BASED ON EMANCIPATION, LIBERATION AND SELF DETERMINATION

Contents of part 3

a. The limits placed on social democracy during a crisis of global capitalism

b. From revolutionary democratic social democracy to existing state-accommodating reformist social democracy

c. A further shift in the meaning of social democracy; the brief emergence of an alternative revolutionary democratic communism; and the descent to state-backed official communism and dissident communism

d. Social democracy and official communism morph into social neo-liberalism

e. From social liberalism to populism

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a. The limits placed on social democracy during a crisis of global capitalism

i. We are living through a period of unprecedented global crisis – political, economic, social, and cultural. This means that ideas will be tested continuously. A democratic party based on the exploited and oppressed will have people from a whole number of tendencies – communist (as outlined in 2.f.iii), republican socialist, social democratic, movementist, green socialist, socialist feminist, environmental, etc. Continue reading “A CRITIQUE OF JEREMY CORBYN AND BRITISH LEFT SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, Part 3”

Since the Brexit vote, the Tories, under Theresa May’s leadership, have been moving away from the recently shared politics of the majority of the British ruling class and mainstream British political parties. A central feature of these politics was based upon the globalised neo-liberal economics pushed by Margaret Thatcher, in the interests of a turbo-charged City of London. The City had really taken off after Nigel Lawson’s ‘Big Bang’ deregulation in 1983. Following New Labour’s 1996 election victory, they adopted the same unquestioning pro-City path. This was shown when Chancellor Gordon Brown abolished the few remaining government controls over the City’s operations. Under Tony Blair, Butskellism gave way to Blatcherism.Continue reading “WHICH WAY NOW – ‘BREXIT’ OR ‘EX-BRIT’?”

AN OPEN LETTER TO THOSE LEXITERS* OPPOSED TO A SECOND EU REFERENDUM, BUT TOO NERVOUS TO CALL A DEMO FOR A ‘FREE UK’ TO IMMEDIATELY BREAK WITH THE EU, WORRIED WHO MIGHT TURN UP!

Dear comrades,

June 24th hasn’t quite panned out as you Lexiters claimed it would. All those workers “justified” in supporting Brexit have not followed up their crushing victory over Cameron by taking to the streets or striking against the Tories’ austerity drive; nor does a Jeremy Corbyn led Labour Party look particularly likely to replace the Tories in any immediate general election.Continue reading “AN OPEN LETTER TO LEXITERS”

As part of our celebration the 1916 Easter Rising, we are posting two new articles. The first is by Allan Armstrong (RCN), and addresses Lenin’s response to in his Irish Rebellion of 1916 (which is also posted). The second comes from the latest issue of Socialist Democracy (Ireland) and looks at the situation in Ireland today, 100 years after the Rising.

1. LENIN AND THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1916

The Dublin GPO during the 1916 Rising, painted by Robert Ballagh

In the midst of the First World War, following the Dublin 1916 Easter Rising, Lenin returned to the issue of national self-determination. He had already addressed this at the beginning of the year in The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination. Immediately before the Rising, he had also gone on to write The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up.Continue reading “THE CENTENARY OF THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1916”

The National Union of Mineworkers has issued a strong statement on the Ukrainian question as a rebuttal to a number of smears against their union. That any section of the labour movement would engage in such smears is further evidence of the shocking depths of retrogression some have descended to recently. The NUM is the only trade union in the UK that has visited Ukraine repeatedly since the current crisis began, with a fourth delegation having just returned which visited a number of areas and met with a range of trade unionists. We encourage other sections of the labour movement to republish the NUM statement and learn from their example of true internationalism.

Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 24.11.15

STATEMENT BY THE NATIONAL UNION OF MINEWORKERS

The NUM is disturbed by the smears against our union regarding our approach to the conflict in Ukraine. These smears have been promoted mainly by elements on the outskirts of the Labour Movement, sadly some who should know better have been willing to give air to such defamation. We at the NUM have long experience of those who would seek to sow divisions and discredit us and we have a proven record of defending ourselves when necessary.

It is the centenary of the publication of the Zimmerwald Manifesto. This was produced by social democratic delegates from countries drawn into the imperialist First World War. Chris Ford of the Ukrainian Solidarity Campaign provides an introduction to this important document. He shows the relevance of the Zimmerwald Manifesto to the situation we face today, particularly Ukraine.

CENTENARY OF THE ZIMMERWALD MANIFESTO

One hundred years ago an International Socialist Conference of those opposed to the First World War gathered in Zimmerwald, near Bern Switzerland from 5 to 8 September 1915. At a time when the international socialist movement had shattered with many supporting the war the conference at Zimmerwald by those who emained faithfull to the principles of the socialist international offered a beacon of hope in a Europe gripped by war and reaction. The International socialist conference began a movement around the Manifesto which it produced.Continue reading “CENTENARY OF THE ZIMMERWALD MANIFESTO”